Hubpages: An all in one Guide!

Over the last month or so I have been running some tests and writing up some results from my experiments with hubpages.com.

You will want to read this post if you:

Are looking to set up a small yet regular online income

Need to build some targeted back links that will be noticed by Google

This final post on the topic rounds up my conclusions and offers some tips on how to achieve similar results.

What are hubpages?

Hubpages.com is essentially an article hosting site that allows users to post up a “hub” all about a particular topic. If your hub is of sufficient quality any backlinks within the article will be followed thus passing on some decent Page Rank on to the site you are linking to. This makes hubpages an ideal way to kick start a site and get some links to your content. Because of Hubpage’s quality system Google values the domain and the links that come from it.

Unlike other article marketing sites, they also allow you to place adsense and Amazon links so you can derive a small income from the pages. The site also has a “social” element that allows you to make friends, talk in the forum and read other people’s articles.

The Most Important Factor that will Lead to Success with Hubpages

You will have read this before, you will probably have experienced it yourself, but this doesn’t make it any less important and it is the one thing that hold back 99% of people trying to make a little extra pocket money online. If you want to get something out of this, you will need persistence!

The biggest reason people fail at this is because they give up to quickly. I noticed very little was happening after my first 10 hubs. When I hit around 30 or so I began to see a few clicks each week, but nothing to get too excited about. And it was only when I reached over 100 that I began to see income of several pounds a day.

If you give up after writing 5-10 articles then you will be just one of many who will walk away thinking what’s the point. But keep at it and you may well see a small, yet regular, income dripping through to you for many years to come! Of course success will depend on the quality and nature of your articles, but this should improve the more you write.

How do I get high Hubpage Scores?

High Hubpage scores are achieved by writing good original content. Pick a topic that you enjoy and can naturally write 500-800 words on. The longer the article the better – search engines love content! Target a topic that should rank well in Google, look for the less competitive keywords. Remember to use clear headings, bullet points and other style techniques to make your article easy to read. Add in a couple of pictures and videos for good measure and you are done.

You will find that the scores start low and begin to rise over time, don’t let the whole score thing put you off, you don’t have to do anything special to see your profile rating head over 90 or so.

Here is a view of my hubpage traffic over the last few weeks (hubpages allows you to track traffic with google analytics):

As you can see, traffic seems to be inconsistent and can vary considerably from day to day, but this is exactly why more hubs can help protect against that variation and provide a steady flow.

The Reality

Unlike other sites, I am not going to claim this is any kind of repeatable winning formula that will enable you to retire. I have created hubs on a whole range of topics from gadget purchase tips, to new software releases, real estate and health issues. And if I am honest it has been difficult to predict which, if any, of those pages will be the ones that draw in traffic and collect profitable clicks.

However, by looking at the last week we can see that it is possible to derive a small yet significant income:

Given that I write all my pages whilst sitting on the train every morning on the way to work (thanks to a netbook!) I think this is not bad for otherwise “dead” time. If this has been achieved in a couple of months, I wonder what I could be getting this time next year?

By diversifying my writing material and keeping at it I have built enough pages to ensure a small number of consistent clicks are obtained each and every day. And in addition to that the links within my articles are helping my other sites rank better and even sending over some traffic.